SHAH ALAM: THE new Spexer 2000 radars for ESSCOM is expected to be operational, next year. An Airbus Defence and Space released confirmed the five radars will be delivered in 2016. Malaysian Defence reported about the radars in a previous post.
Apart from the new and old radars, UAVs, and the floating bases, some other ISR capabilities have also been deployed to ESSCOM recently but since its an operational matter, I will leave it that for the moment.
Yesterday, it was also announced that ESSCOM is getting a new chief, Datuk Wan Abdul Bhari Wan Abdul Khalid, whose appointment will become effective on Dec 23. Wan Abdul Bhari, the former KL Traffic chief replaced the current commander Datuk Abdul Rashid Harun, who has been promoted as the Sabah police commissioner.
Airbus Defence and Space Delivers High-Performance Radar for Protection of Malaysian Coastlines
ULM, Germany — Airbus Defence and Space will deliver five of its newest SPEXER 2000 Coastal radars to Malaysia in order to monitor coastlines and prevent illicit intrusions. Under the multimillion Euro contract, deliveries will be completed in 2016.
“SPEXER 2000 Coastal is the worldwide first security radar using the latest radar technology of Active Electronically Scanning Array (AESA). Its capability to detect even smallest targets in difficult littoral environments ensures a very high level of situational awareness providing security forces with additional reaction time”, explained Thomas Müller, Head of Electronics and Border Security at Airbus Defence and Space.
SPEXER 2000 Coastal is optimized for the surveillance of coastal areas and maritime infrastructure such as harbours and oil fields. With an instrumented range of 133 NM (247 km), its high doppler and velocity resolution as well as its high sea clutter suppression, it is able to detect and track even very small and slowly moving objects such as swimmers and rubber dinghies, but also fast objects such as speed boats. The Command & Control system will be provided by Signalis/Bremen.
Due to a unique signal processing architecture, SPEXER 2000 Coastal reliably detects sea, land and air targets alike. Hence, one SPEXER 2000 Coastal radar can replace two or more conventional radars that would be necessary for a simultaneous land and sea surveillance.
The radar has a compact all-in-one design allowing also the integration into surveillance vehicles or the rapid deployment on a tripod for an on-demand surveillance of alternating areas of interest. Furthermore, a camera can be cued to the radar in order to identify suspicious objects. Combined with its high availability and no scheduled maintenance, this ensures a superior performance without any surveillance gaps.
SPEXER 2000 Coastal is part of Airbus Defence and Space’s SPEXER security radar family which consists of several sensors, each optimized for specific applications in the fields of border, infrastructure, perimeter and coastal surveillance.
A specific version for border surveillance, SPEXER 2000, is deployed in a huge border surveillance system in the Middle East; a military version has been developed for the German Army.
— Malaysian Defence
If you like this post, buy me an espresso. Paypal Payment
I hope one goes to the platform offshore base. The rest around impirtant towns n cities with two in tge ESSCOM area to provide overlapping images
Has the askarad radar bought in the 90s still operational or retired…they were bought to equipped the malbatt in now bosnia…during the peace keeping mission..
Reply
Not sure but most likely it would have been retired. Perhaps some one else will chip in..
I’m neither pro-Government or Opposition but rather pro-security. These radars or any assets for ESSCOM are supposed to be under RMK11 budget but seems that it has been quietly awarded much earlier as these takes time to built or implement. Ok all in the name of security so do not divulge too much of info. Looking back just 3 years ago before the intrusion, SSSS (Sabah Sea Surveillance System) was already implemented and officially launched early 2012 see http://www.puncak.com.my/eventsabah9.html and this C3 or C4 system also consist of 3 MSU (Mobile Surveillance System) which consists of long range radar, day & night cameras, GPS, AIS, etc. The same company got the contract obviously for maintenance of 3 MSU in 2014 at the cost of RM9million. These MSU can be deployed almost any where as there are a lot of flat land or at elevated height for longer distance which in my opinion even with 3 MSU you can cover the current hot spots. Of course based on the current specification of the MSU the radar can picked up small boats at 10 nautical miles and camera at 12km which if the pirates are having 3 to 4 engines and speeding towards the coastal you will still have 15 minutes of detection and tracking capabilities and you can deployed the assets to intercept. Surprisingly none of these ever made news having spend millions. And now they are purchasing Spexer 2000 which claim 133 NM but if you go to the website it\’s totally different story in fact not much improvement from the current radar despite claims of advancement (typical of big defence companies) http://northamerica.airbus-group.com/north-america/usa/Airbus-Defense-and-Space/SPEXER/SPEXER-2000-Coastal.html. Are we going to see potential failures due to the fact that everyone wants to sell their solutions but disregard the synergy and operational part of it? Are attack helicopters any good unless we plan to shoot or blow the pirates our of the water? What is the deployment time to interception using heli? Whatever fast attack vessel we have it will never be fast enough to catch up as simple logic will explain, assuming the pirates run at 50knots and our vessel at 70knots from a certain distance catching up, how long will it take? 70 knots is already very very fast and is it practical when you are playing catch up? Manoeuvrability at high speed? We will see a few happy companies who managed to sell but we will not see an end to pirates and now ISIS chapter penetrating our coastal line.
Reply
The Sabah SSS covers up to Sandakan AFAIK and not the whole of ESSCOM. The radars in ESSCOM are those of the 1206 (donated by the US in 2006) and some Army radars which will be replaced by the Spexer radars. Of course they will have to plan to buy them ahead of the budget as everything else. Somethings get prioritised as its fall under the UOR. Would we got a better radar if there was an open tender? Perhaps I dont have answer. As whether or not all of the new security assets will be able to stop any intrusions is also beyond me. The potential intruders are not IS, they are simply kidnap for hire gangs.